And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, and that it was flat: And God divided the light from the darkness by moving the contrast slider up to about seventy percent. Amen.

for all the retards out there, as an fyi: generally, eyes start out as a few photo-sensitive cells; creatures with more of the cells can perceive better and survive to reproduce where others fail. thus it becomes a big ol' smattering of photo-sensitive cells over many thousands of *generations*. the membrane starts to bend to allow more surface area for more light-sensitive cells; and eventually transparent membranes form a sort of lid over these cells etc. lenses come as a result of this later etc.

as someone who has studied both science and religion extensively, I can undoubtedly say the science is what to respect and honor in life. if you are too old to begin to learn modern science, or too stupid, then please, just sit back and do not interfere with those who can.

I thought Religion was more of a desperate attempt to give life meaning, and a quick cop out answer to explaining things we that we do not understand, but maybe that's just because I'm a pessimist as well as a rational thinker. Blind faith in a God as described by man, is not for me. I'm not closed to the idea that there is another force that made the universe, but it isn't going to be a god manifested from our flawed human minds. A Creator of infinite existence is just too much for us to comprehend imo.

Primarily taking the 'writer's' standpoint in life as a future professor and author, I find it hard to live without the idea of a supreme moral force. I am able to understand and believe in God when I practice creating my own realities in my mind to use within stories. I do not seek to prove him using a banana or my own simple thought processes, but even if there is no proof, I'd rather believe in God than believe in nothing. Whether he be a person or a force or an event.

That being said, I believe everything science has to tell us, because science is truth. Truth is God. It is often overlooked that if he is anything great, God is the greatest scientist. I see nothing incompatible between science and the progression of the Universe and it's possible creator. Religion should never center upon proving God, it should center upon our actions amongst other living beings and ourselves. The origin of the Universe and the existence of God are unimportant compared 2 the tempered self

"Right, like the actions of condemning homosexuals, shunning non-believers, wearing magic underwear, and suicide bombing to screw virgins. Religion sure is great. Clearly, giving your self a moral crutch and feeling warm and fuzzy inside are well worth the downsides of it."
You're right. Clearly, we should pursue atheism, since it's led to such greats as Stalin, who murdered hundreds of thousands of people. Obviously better. /sarcasm

That's what we call a fallacy, Firebird, because it assumes that religion is the source of all morality. Morality is a product of simple lessons of life and experiences accrued over time and beginning with childhood. If you were raised in the Middle East, you'd likely feel that subjugating women is a perfectly moral thing to do because that's how you'd have been raised, much like how you think it's perfectly OK to talk and pray to your imaginary friend because your deluded parents raised you to do so.

"Right, like the actions of condemning homosexuals, shunning non-believers, wearing magic underwear, and suicide bombing to screw virgins. Religion sure is great." These are things others have done in the name of THEIR religions. This is not MY religion. You have no conception of MY religion but it is not bound to the wrongdoings you list. I am religious pluralist, I believe the best of everything and reject the worst.

What man religous people fail to see is that their holy books were translated by -people- throughout the years. This may come as a suprise to some, but people are corrupt. Anything written in those texts that sounds wrong, probably is for that reason. Also, religion needs to adapt to survive. Many things taught hundreds of years ago don't really apply to our moden culture. What needs to be taken from religion are the universal ideas dealing with the brotherhood of mankind, not any of the other dumb sh*t.

baeur, take your flawed preachings somewhere else. Why don't you do some research on evolution before trying to point out flaws in the theory. the human eye argument repeated by priests just gives me a head ache. they are not 'chance' mutations, or 'by accident' as they usually like to say. It's a Long process of addapttion, probably starting with a simple abbility to sense heat or light. And don't say "It's a THEORY" as an argument. It makes you look like an idiot. I bet you believe in gravity, you

know that's just a THEORY? or the THEORY that the earth revolves around the sun? a Theory is not a GUESS. It requires research, and EVIDENCE, to be accepted in the scientific community (which religion has nothing of the sort). Evolution is a reality, and religion has done nothing but hold society and science back.

I could go into A HUGE rant about evidence supporting evolution, but I know you would just use your non- falsifiable Bullsh#t logic to try and contradict me. I've argued with people like you before. I know nothing I say will make you even consider the possibility of evolution. You may act like you wish to be convinced (like any proper skeptic), but the fact that you believe religion shows me that 'evidence' is meaningless to you.

All those exaples you gave are just showing what evolution leads to over billions of years. Even if Darwin had doubted his theory later in life (which I have heard is nothing more than a myth), he lived in a time when the evidence supporting evolution was low. the advances in science, and the discoveries we have made since have made this theory undeniable in the mind of any intelligent person. I am not insulting your intelligence, or calling you an idiot, just saying you are being naive and ignorant.

And I find the fact you said "so, i ask you, what evidence do you have " appallingly Hypocrytical. I could just go your route and say, "I have faith", and you couldn't touch me. But I would rather believe in something for it's credability. I am an athiest, and I am also a skeptic, so I will not say there is no posibility of a god or higher power, but the fact that there is nothing more than claims without a shred of proof to back them up, gives me my doubts.

You guys are still stuck in the teenage version of "Debating God", which essentially argues over "probability theory" to somehow prove or disprove God. Neither side is convincing because "chance" is not the sole-property of theism or atheism.

Bauersnarky: you are ignorant, arrogant in your beliefs, and you contradict yourself by assuming certain things as fact (some of which is supported by evolutionists like micro-evolution). It's obvious you lack the education to make these claims. You bash others for not supporting scientific theories but then you refuse to back up anything you say yourself. Also OriginalHibbs, I think you might be agnostic, not atheist. I am pretty sure Atheism is believing God cannot exist.

Athiesm is believing god does not exist. I don't think I will ever be convinced theres a invisible magic man in the sky. But as a skeptic I have to agknowledge that it is not impossible. just as it is not impossible that theres an invisible pink unicorn. If undeniable evidence were given to support either, I would be inclined to believe it. but that's not the case. Don't think for a second that I am agnostic

OriginalHibbs is right. You don't need to prove that gods don't exist to be an athiest, just like you don't need to have concusive proof that Bigfoot or Poseidon don't exist. The burden of proof is on the ones claiming existence.
To quote Bertrand Russell:

If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense.

If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.

The eyeball excuse is stupid and heres why. Everything that you see is relative. If we hadn't evolved to process the way light bounces off objects the way we do now we would have evolved to process the light reflection in some other way. To assume that the way we see everything is the way everything actually exists is naive.

I actually utilize another definition of atheism. It's not quite right, but I like it. Goes like this: You CAN'T prove God is real, nor can you know for sure what his desires are. You cannot even know if he desires your worship. It is not only pointless but definitively insane to base one's actions on the unknowable whims of a being whose existence cannot even be proven. While God may or may not exist, one should act on only what is known or plausible, and wait for death to see who's right.

That's what we call a fallacy, Firebird, because it assumes that religion is the source of all morality. Morality is a product of simple lessons of life and experiences accrued over time and beginning with childhood. If you were raised in the Middle East, you'd likely feel that subjugating women is a perfectly moral thing to do because that's how you'd have been raised, much like how you think it's perfectly OK to talk and pray to your imaginary friend because your deluded parents raised you to do so.

Bauersnark, You say the spontaneous generation of life is complete bullsh*t. But if life could never be generated, how could it exist? Now here's where you say god created life. So that means that God spontaneously generated life right? You see, we both believe in spontaneous generation of life, the only difference is, you believe that there has to be some kind of supernatural component to it, whereas most people do not (because they're not morons).

Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.
Isaiah 6:10

The judgment that something is beautiful is nothing but the claim that something appears designed though it may lack practical function. This appearance of design and unity in nature brings us to reject chance as a possible cause and we infer that there is a unified, perfect, mighty, wise, and self-sufficient Being behind that beauty. This may give us hope, but it cannot prove with certainty the existence of such a being. For that, we require a necessary being with all-embracing reality, which in turn must be shown necessarily exist.

Beauty is something I call "optimal stimulation." When you see just the "right" colors, a pianist hits just the "right" chords, or get just the "right" amount of salt out of a potato chip: that's beauty. It's not the perception of design in nature. That arises from the oft-unrealized notion that we would design Nature like that if it were up to us: to provide ourselves with optimal stimulation in order to maximize emotional highs.

Design on a fundamental level, is connected with the attempt to produce the "right effect" either sensually or otherwise. Your first example is certainly the sort of thing we would only be willing to attribute to design while your second is an object of design (engaged in by the Pringles factory daily). In addition, I never claimed that we are actually seeing design. No, we never see the property of design itself. I claimed that we experience the appearance of design whose truth is contingent upon a designer and- if it is to be anything more than a contingent product of human judgment -must be proven aside from the appearance.